She told him all from beginning to end; her great dark eyes were fixed on his face; his eyes, nearly as dark, regarded her gravely. She did not leave out a single point. She explained the entire secret, the miserable little secret which had turned her into a shopgirl, all for such a wretched thing as a dot.
Certainly The Desmond was very grave at first—the colour mounted to his cheeks and he clenched one of his great strong hands; but when Margot went on to describe mon grandpère's death, and then the arrangement which had been finally decided on after the funeral, by which Margot gave up her dot, returning it absolutely to la belle grand'mère and only keeping the old Château for herself—which she could not give away, for she inherited it from her father and her grandfather—then the old man changed his attitude.
He burst into a loud guffaw. He rose to his immense height and folded the pushkeen in his arms, and cried:
"Hip, hip, hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah! Old Ireland forever! The Desmonds forever! Their pluck, their spirit to the world's end!"
Madam, hearing a loud noise, came hastily in, and The Desmond told her to calm herself and to look upon the pushkeen as a gem of the purest water.
"She has been telling me things that set me up," was his remark; "they set me up fine, but they are to go no further. Quit any curious ways, my woman; get my pushkeen her supper. Old Ireland forever! Hip, hip, hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah!"
So little Margot sat on her grandfather's knee and ate the excellent food provided for her by dear, sweet, dainty little Madam, and then, being really very tired, she dropped asleep, with her head leaning on The Desmond's breast, and her dark hair pressed against his white beard.
"Eh, but she's the wonder," said The Desmond; "and I won't have her woke, that I won't, if she lies here all night long. She's mine forever and ever now. Thank the Lord God Almighty and His blessed Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit and the angels and the archangels and all the hosts of heaven, for their mercies! I've got her and she's mine! My pushkeen, my mavourneen, my blessed brave little lamb. I tell you, Mary, she's a heroine. She's better than the best—what more can an old man say?"
Margot did awake in time to go up to her own snug little bedroom, to slip into her own cosy bed, and to sleep the sound sleep of the weary. But before he went to bed himself that night, The Desmond had a talk with Fergus.
"We've got her back, Fergus boy," he said. "She's ours now forever."